Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present » (First Trade Paper Edition)

Beryl Lieff Benderly is the author of several books, including Dancing without Music: Deafness in America.

Ever since Peter Stuyvesant grudgingly admitted a band of twenty-three refugee Jews to colonial New Amsterdam in 1654, Jewish women have played a pivotal role in shaping American culture. By the end of World War II, the United States had the largest, institutions centered on women's sacred role-of transmitting tradition, alleviating distress, of carrying on an ancient heritage of social responsibility.

In their vibrant history of this vital community, Hasia R. Diner and Beryl Lieff Benderly chronicle the lives and legacies of fifteen generations of mothers, earners and agitators. Drawing on long-neglected public records, private diaries, memoirs and letters, they offer complex portraits of Emma Lazarus, Mrs. Wyatt Earp, Batty Friedan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as figures such as the young Clara Lemlich, who led one of the landmark strikes of the American labor movement, and Lena Bryant, who liberated women from the constraints of Victorian pregnancy. Brimming with stories of grit, sacrifice and accomplishment, the result is an engrossing account of how America transformed Jewish women-and how they, in turn, transformed America.